TTAC was one of the first sources to call BS on Globe and Mail journo-hack Peter Cheney’s ridiculous justification for his son’s press-car incident, but as the week went on, more and more outlets picked up on the obvious fact that Porsches don’t jump out of garages on their own. There’s this thing called a “clutch interlock switch”. Mr. Cheney likely figured that, since he doesn’t know much about cars, that the public would know even less. Oops!

The decent thing to do in these circumstances would be to simply apologize to one’s readers and then to return to the whirlwind lifestyle of far-flung press events, free $180,000 cars, and hilariously low performance standards which is synonymous with “automotive journalism”. It would have been quickly forgotten. The man who was responsible for approving Cheney’s original Porsche loaner flat-out told me, “I’ll give him another one.” Of course he will! Porsche, and everybody else in the business, is perfectly prepared to turn a blind eye to Cheney’s misdeeds past, present, and future. I was recently contacted by an anonymous Canadian source who told me that “Cheney’s kid drives press cars all the time, and everybody knows it.” So what? We’re on the gravy train now! Let’s keep it rolling!

Mr. Cheney, of course, can’t just let that happen. He’s apparently done enough “real” journalism in his life to know that there needs to be a culprit behind this incident, and he’s self-deluded enough to somehow miss the fact that his own spoiled son is to blame. As a result, we’ve been treated to another story, in which Cheney, um, finds the real killers. “Now,” he hilariously writes, “I was searching for answers, sifting through the debris like an air crash investigator.”(Read More…)